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There's no automatic cutoff to the phantom power supply when the battery is low but could I was wondering if it's in a state where for some reason the phantom power is not supplied even though the option is 'on' in the menu? Does toggling the phantom power on/off option help?

Yeah nah coming from a micro too. there's no gain option in menu that i can see for 3.5 mic and the in camera gain is greyed out. the shure mic pumps out a decent signal when needed. stumped.

UPDATE:
Strangely after switching chanel one off and then just having chanel two as 3.5mm mono mic it now works as well as internal gain so all is good. quite odd

Not sure what you did but consider this possibility. There are only two channels of audio. If you still had the internal mics or XLR enabled then it would only accept a mono signal through the mini plug. You can have only two audio channels activated simultaneously.

Received my PK4 this afternoon. After doing a quick sensor and operational check, I wanted to finally see what the audio is like. I am VERY happy to report that my Sennheiser Mke 600 microphone plugged into the mini XLR port with an adapter provides a beautiful signal with, I am confident, less noise floor than the Ursa Mini Pro. I think Grant mentioned this in the kick off video and its TRUE! One really will be able to use this camera for great video AND audio capture without a plethora of add on audio components. Since the Mke has a switchable internal battery, and after reading about some of the phantom power issues with the PK4 internal battery, I did this test without relying on phantom power from the camera. I personally feel powering this camera, large bright display AND pulling phantom power is asking a lot from the LPE6 batteries. Sadly, with the single XLR input, one cannot adjust input levels on the two channels independently. How nice would it be if a software switch could toggle a -20db pad on channel 2 when using the single XLR input? The UMP has something similar to this though it only works with separate XLR inputs. One can however record the PK4 XLR channel as one source and the internal mic as a second with separate input controls. Nice work on these preamps BMD!

I am VERY happy to report that my Sennheiser Mke 600 microphone plugged into the mini XLR port with an adapter provides a beautiful signal

That's great. Now for the truly important audio question.

Let's say you're out filming some local wildlife, or making a documentary about fly fishing, or a promo piece for the local animal shelter and the acres of land they have for dogs to run around on...or the dancing at a wedding reception. In all of these cases, usable stereo nat sound would not be unheard of (so to speak).

Can the P4K do it using the built-in mics? Or perhaps more to the point, how do those built-in mics compare to the Rode Stereo VideoMic X or Pro?

Let's say you're out filming some local wildlife, or making a documentary about fly fishing, or a promo piece for the local animal shelter and the acres of land they have for dogs to run around on...or the dancing at a wedding reception. In all of these cases, usable stereo nat sound would not be unheard of.

Can the P4K do it using the built-in mics? Or perhaps more to the point, how do those built-in mics compare to the Rode Stereo VideoMic X or Pro?

From the sample I heard (can't remember the link) from a gentleman on YouTube, i was impressed by the internal mics. It was actually on quite a windy day and it was still usable in my opinion. But obviously it's a little subjective.